Can India, China cooperate on Afghanistan?

Afghanistan matters not because it is an arena for inter-state competition or competing national interests. It is important because a weak state can make it vulnerable again to radical forces and ideologies eager to fill any vacuum.

Zorawar Daulet Singh


The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is so far the only regional institution in place but its area of interest is Central Asia and not Afghanistan. This file photo shows the SCO members and observers at a meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, last year. AFP (Left) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with his Afghan counterpart Zarar Ahmad Usmani in Kabul recently. According to China, Afghanistan’s stability impacts its western province Xinjiang. AFP

INDIAN, Chinese and Afghan delegations, comprising former practitioners and scholars, engaged in a trilateral workshop organised by an international think tank in the last week of February. The rationale for the workshop was to examine and identify the prospects for India-China cooperation over conflict management in Afghanistan.

As one Chinese scholar remarked if such a theme for trilateral cooperation had been suggested a few years ago, it would have been dismissed as simply fantastic. In fact, at the track-1 level, Indian and Chinese diplomats engaged in their first structured conversation on Afghanistan in April, 2013.

The recent workshop revealed interesting insights into how these two regional powers perceive their interests in Afghanistan, and how the Afghan elite perceive their own state-building challenges ahead.

Persistent bilateralism

A common pattern of Indian and Chinese remarks is the persistence of the norm of bilateralism in Delhi and Beijing’s foreign policies. For both India and China, this can be traced to a cultural preference in their foreign relations for bilateral engagement and partnerships emanating from their post-colonial identities that constrain both states from sharing sovereignty in a multilateral or cooperative security framework.

China for shared approach

For China, bilateralism also has a particular virtue in this case as it enables Beijing to avoid disturbing its other regional priorities — primarily the China-Pakistan relationship. A Chinese participant made clear that Beijing is not interested in a solution that seeks to “AfPak” the process to pressurise Pakistan. China is not interested in involving itself in regional disputes (i.e. India-Pakistan, Afghanistan-Pakistan). In China’s world, the participant argued, Afghanistan and Pakistan are viewed as separate issues with a clear priority: Afghanistan’s security is a regional and global problem but Pakistan’s security is China’s problem.



The only regional institution in place – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO — is not prepared at this stage to expand its original mandate and area of interest from Central Asia to Afghanistan. A Chinese participant argued that the SCO is useful for counter-narcotics cooperation but counter-terrorism cooperation was difficult under this format. The ship of the Chinese state moves slowly and cautiously, and, this was reflected by Chinese participants who seemed reluctant to offer decisive assessments on the possible flux in Chinese interests after the pull out of Western troops.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Kabul on February 22 is significant. Wang outlined Chinese interests in a press conference with his Afghan counterpart, Zarar Ahmad Osmani: “The peace and stability of this country has an impact on the security of western China, and more importantly, it affects the tranquility and development of the entire region.” Earlier, on February 7, Xi Jinping met Hamid Karzai at the Sochi Winter Olympics. According to official Chinese reports, Xi stressed that “China will continue to firmly support Afghanistan for the efforts for safeguarding state independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and support an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned” national reconciliation process.” Diplomatically, China has already adjusted its Afghan policy.

One Chinese scholar stated that India-China cooperation on Afghanistan is welcome but the primary initiative for such trilateral initiatives should come from Kabul. It was also stated that China will not lead a regional process but will be an equal member of a shared approach.

India and multilateral networks

Despite possessing a relatively softer version of state sovereignty, India too finds it difficult to craft effective trilateral or multilateral networks on issues of high politics. On Afghanistan, this is a disadvantage because without direct geopolitical access to a landlocked Afghanistan, crafting simultaneous partnerships with Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours becomes obvious for India. Yet, in the post-9/11 phase, India’s prior Afghan-centric cooperation with Iran, Russia and Central Asia simply dried up. In the last year or so, these regional conversations have restarted.

In fact, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in his February visit to Delhi remarked: “Chabahar and a corridor, both rail and road from Chabahar to Afghanistan and Central Asia, is a project we are working together with India. I hope that in this trip we can take practical steps (to implement the project)”. The Chabahar port is connected to the city of Zaranj in southwestern Afghanistan from where India has already constructed a 200-km road to Delaram (reducing the journey time from 14 hours to 2 hours), which further connects to an existing road network onto Kabul and other important provincial towns.

An Afghan participant remarked that an operationalised Chabahar port will open a new lifeline for Afghanistan and reduce the dependence on Karachi as Afghanistan’s only line of communication to the Indian Ocean.

Overall, bilateralism remains an obstacle to structured regional cooperation, and, in the near-term, it is perhaps more realistic to anticipate Afghanistan’s immediate and extended neighbours pursuing independent policies with limited coordination. But this does not imply that there are serious intra-regional conflicts of interest over Afghanistan. Leaving aside the case of Pakistan, which is pursuing its traditional role as a spoiler, none of the other regional states are actually working at cross-purposes. India, China, Iran and Russia are all legitimising the Afghan state and providing varying degrees of material assistance. In sum, self-help policies have not translated into zero-sum outcomes so far.

Assistance for Afghanistan

The Afghan side consistently emphasised the sovereignty of the present Kabul regime and argued for an “Afghan government-led” reconciliation process rather than an “Afghan-led” process of inclusive peace building among the different ethnic groups. According to participants, the latter nomenclature is prone to misuse by external actors attempting to pursue their own conflict-resolution strategies on the reconciliation issue, which more often than not undermines the credibility of the Afghan government, and, the efficacy of the reconciliation process itself.

The general impression was the Afghan elite appears resilient enough to preserve the gains of the past decade and there is agency inside Afghanistan to absorb capacity-building assistance from wherever they can find it. One former practitioner remarked that a demographically young Afghanistan cohering around an Afghan national identity will not voluntarily submit to radical or separatist ideologies if even a modicum of an international lifeline in terms of capacity and financial assistance remains open for the remainder of this decade.

On China, the Afghan side urged participants to stop viewing Afghanistan through Pakistan’s prism and view it as an entity itself. On India, the Afghan side sought greater support – if not an “alliance” then an effective “partnership”. Afghan requirements include training their officer corps, military equipment particularly helicopters and medical evacuation capabilities, training a generation of technocrats to man the embryonic state apparatus, educational assistance via scholarships to Indian and Chinese institutions.

Scenario post-2014

Historically, Afghanistan’s role in the region has evolved in four broad stages. The pre-modern phase was really about Afghanistan as a route to militarily access India. As one Afghan participant wryly remarked this phase left only ruins to reminisce about. The second stage of Afghanistan’s development was the “Great Game” era, and, Afghanistan’s territorial definition was shaped by imperial expansion and an ultimate accommodation between British India and Russia. In the backdrop of such a balance of power, Afghanistan discovered some autonomy as a buffer between these two empires. The 1907 Anglo-Russian convention gave formal expression to a semi-neutral Afghanistan.

The third stage was opened with the 1979 Russian invasion, which overturned what had remained a peripheral locale for the great powers. The reaction to this intervention led to the ultimate destruction of the Afghan state, and, the ascendance of the externally sponsored Taliban in 1990s.

Post-2001 opened the contemporary phase. Today, Afghanistan matters not because it is an arena for inter-state competition or competing national interests but because a weak state can make Afghanistan vulnerable again to radical forces and ideologies eager to fill any vacuum.

The one unstated question that seemed to form the backdrop of the workshop was whether regional powers could live with an Afghan power vacuum that strengthens extremist havens and its potential spillover onto their territorial frontiers. For India, the historical lessons are clear: even a modicum of a progressive pluralistic state in Afghanistan is an antidote to radicalism in South Asia. For China, the spectre of radicalism infecting its western regions suggests Afghanistan can no longer be dealt via a posture of benign neglect. But the policy mix for both India and China in terms of level of assistance and involvement is in flux.

As the realist adage goes, there is no virtue like necessity. The coming months and years might find two unlikely regional powers — India and China — coordinating on at least some questions on Afghanistan’s destiny.

— The author is a doctoral candidate at King’s College London, and co-author of India China Relations: The Border Issue and Beyond

The year of transition

* Afghanistan is scheduled to undergo a political transition, courtesy the presidential elections due in April, and a security transition, with the full withdrawal of international combat troops by the end of this year.

* The Bilateral Security Agreement with the US would help to maintain a small US troop presence in Afghanistan following the general drawdown in 2014. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has not signed it.

* Given their strategic interests, India and Iran could offer Afghanistan a critical lifeline during a period of uncertainty.

* Both Moscow and Beijing are concerned about the future of Afghanistan and possible instability in the country after US withdrawal.

* Afghanistan and China share a border. The northeastern end of the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan connects the two countries. The terrain is widely inhospitable, making border control challenging. Beijing is concerned that Xinjiang-bound insurgents could take advantage of Afghanistan’s porous border with Tajikistan and make their way towards Xinjiang.